Since July 2012, Professor Hoda Mahmoudi has held The Bahá’í Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland, College Park. As director of this endowed academic program, Professor Mahmoudi collaborates with a wide range of scholars, researchers, and practitioners to advance interdisciplinary analysis and open discourse on global peace.  She contributes to and promotes sound scientific research on peace that expands knowledge and strategies, and explores the role of individuals and institutions in removing obstacles to peace.

In 2017, Professor Mahmoudi and the Bahá’í Chair for World Peace program received the University of Maryland President’s Commission on Ethnic Minority Issues Annual Award for outstanding work on structural racism. In 2016, Professor Mahmoudi accepted the Outstanding Honors Faculty Award in appreciation for her popular Honors Seminar on “The Problem of Prejudice: Overcoming Impediments to Peace and Justice,” as well as for her symposia on timely topics of interest to the international community, featuring highly renowned guest speakers.

In 2013, Professor Mahmoudi began exploring the research theme, “Structural Racism and the Roots of Prejudice,” by inviting leading race scholars to the University of Maryland to present their work and explore solutions to racism and prejudice. An edited volume of the related research findings has been published by Routledge Press on the theme of Systemic Racism in America and is co-edited by Rashawn Ray and Hoda Mahmoudi.

Empowerment of Women and Peace, Global Governance and Leadership, Human Nature, Overcoming Challenges in the Globalization of the Environment are other research themes that her program explores to promote innovative ideas and strategies for a more peaceful world.

Before joining the University of Maryland faculty, Professor Mahmoudi served as the coordinator of the Research Department at the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa, Israel from 2001 to 2012.  Prior to that, Dr. Mahmoudi was Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northeastern Illinois University, where she was also a faculty member in the Department of Sociology. Professor Mahmoudi also served as Vice President and Dean of Olivet College, where she was instrumental in a nationally recognized, institutional transformation.

In 2019, Professor Mahmoudi published two co-edited volumes Children and Globalization; Multidisciplinary Perspectives is co-edited with Professor Steven Mintz of the University of Texas at Austin, and is published with Routledge. The second volume Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Dignity and Human Rights is co-edited with Professor Michael Penn of Franklin and Marshall College, and is published with Emerald Publishing. 

In 2020, Professor Mahmoudi published a co-authored volume with Dr. Janet Khan, A World Without War, which is published by Bahá'í Publishing. 

In 2021, Professor Mahmoudi co-edited The Changing Ethos of Human Rights, the volume is published with Edward Elgar Publishing and was co-edited with Professor Alison Brysk, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Dr. Kate Seaman, Assistant Director at The Bahá’í Chair for World Peace, University of Maryland College Park.

In 2022, Professor Mahmoudi published two co-edited volumes, Fundamental Challenges to Global Peace and Security, co-edited with Professor Michael Allen, Bryn Mawr College, and Dr. Kate Seaman, University of Maryland College Park, which is published with Palgrave Macmillan. Systemic Racism in America: Sociological Theory, Educational Inequality, and Social Change, co-edited with Professor Rashawn Ray, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Lab for Applied Social Science Research at University of Maryland College Park. In 2023, Professor Mahmoudi published a co-edited volume, Infrastructure, Wellbeing, and the Measurement of Happiness, co-edited with Professor Jenny Roe, Professor and Director of the Center for Design and Health in the School of Architecture, University of Virginia and Honorary Professor in the Urban Institute, Heriot Watt University, UK, and Dr. Kate Seaman, Assistant Director, Bahá’í Chair for World Peace, University of Maryland College Park.

In 2022 and 2023, Professor Mahmoudi co-authored two articles with Dr. Tiffani Betts Razavi, the first A Bahá’í concept of peace as a resource for peace education: Case study of ‘The Problem of Prejudice was published in 2022 in the Journal of Peace Education. The Second, What can be learned from looking for gender differences in peace education data? Lessons from a Bahá’í-inspired undergraduate course, was published in the Journal of Peace Education in 2023.

In 2024, Professor Mahmoudi published an edited volume, Women and Inequality in a Changing World: Exploring New Paradigms for Peace, which is published Open Access with Routledge, and was co-edited with Professor Jane Parpart and Dr. Kate Seaman.